Cookbook 2314 imagines three hundred years into a dystopian future, a time when slightly mutated versions of today’s plants and animals wander the woods. Of course, the flora and fauna are also our food.

Part illustrated field guide, part personal journal, and part cookbook, this experimental book describes nature and society after the collapse of American civilization. But hope is not lost. The protagonist comes to realize that even in the absence of cultural norms, the facets of humanity worth saving persist through people’s relationship to food.

As an added bonus, all the recipes in Cookbook 2314 cook tastefully when contemporary foods are substituted for their fictional counterparts.

Sample Recipes and Illustrations

Introduction

Curious isn’t it, living after the end of history.

Because the end of history was the end of society—and society ended wrong, ripe with mutation and infighting. The darkest instinct for survival became the only logic left, if you hoped to see tomorrow.

Yet through food, the vestiges of our humanity persist. So simple, this fundamental daily process—who would have thought that the act of nourishing our bodies would be the final refuge for our souls?

It seems our leaders, the champions that they are with sawed-off shotguns, do find some aesthetic pleasure in the violence that’s their charge. So perhaps we’re more misguided than lost. I don’t know. I just couldn’t walk away fast enough.

For me, in breaking bread our lives are affirmed once more. Our relationships with each other, the planet, our past—each can find some light, some breath, and be awakened. Communion at long last. I think you know what I mean.